


Better Than Talking

by chockfullofsecrets



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Tickling, consider this my application to the CHAIR (caduceus hugs are important really) committee, i tried to write Caduceus angst but it wouldn't take
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25817809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chockfullofsecrets/pseuds/chockfullofsecrets
Summary: In her humble opinion, Jester waspret-tygood at cheering up her friends.Caduceus, though… Caduceus was a challenge.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Jester Lavorre
Comments: 16
Kudos: 94





	Better Than Talking

In her humble opinion, Jester was _pret-ty_ good at cheering up her friends. 

She knew the minimum level of destruction required to make Nott stop worrying about consequences and really focus in on a prank, she could spot Yasha’s dry humor as it slid carefully into a conversation and riff on it until half of the party were laughing so hard that they had to pound on tables - she could even kind of make Caleb smile now! No one else in _the whole world_ could do that, except maybe Nott and Frumpkin, but they had known him for so much longer that it still felt like an accomplishment.

Caduceus, though… Caduceus was a challenge. Like a painting that you thought would be pretty easy to do, and then realized that there was _lighting_ and _perspective_ and _lacy things_ that you could spend hours and hours on only to realize that you had to start over again. 

She knew what kind of things he liked, of course - she wasn’t a terrible friend! Or at least she tried to tell herself that when she started panicking. He liked so many things! Nature! Plants! Cookbooks! Tea! Cool dead things! Healthy emotional conversations!

None of which were easily available on the not-quite deserted island that her party was not-quite stuck on, at least not in a form that hadn’t already tried to hurt Caduceus. People, then - she really liked gifts, but if you liked someone a nice conversation with them wasn’t a bad way to cheer up either, right? Jester racked her brain, trying and trying to think of times that Caduceus had sought out one of them to talk to, and in her despair almost came to the conclusion that there was one thing that Caduceus didn’t like for sure and it was _them_. 

That didn’t exactly make sense, though - Caduceus had definitely chosen to come with them instead of going home with his family, and that had to count for something.

Maybe it was just her that he didn’t talk to so much. And that, she wanted to fix. Immediately. 

It felt especially important after the party’s very first Heroes’ Feast, when everyone had done such a great job of making _her_ feel better. Although, she admitted to herself, maybe it was just a little bit the need to find a distraction before she talked herself out of believing all the nice things that her friends had told her about herself that had her wandering over to Caduceus.

He was going through his maintenance ritual, checking on all his lichens and beetles and all the other small bits of life that he carried around with him. Watching him on previous nights, Jester knew this to be a fairly involved inspection and one that required him to be at a distance - no matter how friendly they all were with each other, having flesh-eating bugs crawling around near everyone’s personal items was more potential chaos than even she could handle. She was more than a little relieved to see his ears twitch in acknowledgement of her presence, followed by a gentle rhythmic tapping of his staff on the ground as he encouraged all the creepy-crawlies to make their way back inside. “Hey.” 

“He- _eyyy_ ,” Jester replied, sliding to the ground with crossed legs to mirror his pose. “What’s up, Caduceus?”

Instead of spilling all his secrets, Caduceus tipped his head back slowly to regard the walls of stone that vanished into darkness above them. “Rocks, I guess. Not sure what else could be living up there, but there’s always something, huh?” 

“...huh.” Jester blinked, looking up too, and realized a little too late that Caduceus had already refocused on her with a distinctly amused expression. 

“That’s not what you were asking about, is it.”

She shook her head, learning forward to try and get a better fix on him. “Nope! I wanted to talk about you, actually.”

“Hm,” Caduceus said. He looked surprised, eyebrows raising just a little, which just made Jester feel even more unbalanced - why would it surprise him that she cared how he was feeling? “Okay. What about me?”

Well, she would just have to make it _extra_ clear how much she cared. “Oh, well - are you doing okay, Caduceus?” He didn’t say anything; she needed more. “I mean, you lost your memory last night - and the day before that you almost got eaten _so many times_ \- and then Vokodo almost kidnapped you! - and earlier you said you missed your siblings, I miss my Mama too-”

She trailed off, a little breathless - before listing it off, she hadn’t even realized how much had happened to Caduceus in just the last few days, just that he had been a little quieter than usual. “Wow, that’s a lot of things… really, are you okay?”

“Whoa.” Caduceus looked a little breathless too, and he hadn’t even been saying anything. His lips bunched up on one side as he made a considering noise, scratching at his beard. “I haven’t done that before.”

“What?”

“Listed out all the bad things that happened to me.” He blinked. “That was more than usual, right? Usually I just forget them after a while.”

Jester wondered if this conversation would have made sense to anyone else in the group, searching for some kind of thread of thought to grab. It was a lot harder to talk to someone when you were trying to be serious. “You forget? Like how the people here forget? Oh my god, Caduceus, do you think someone was stealing your memories _before_?”

Caduceus smiled, big and slow. “Nah.” The smile dimmed a little. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t know if they were, right?”

Jester stared at him for a whole minute as his eyes flicked down, brow furrowed in thought. “Um… Caduceus?”

The firbolg in question abruptly cleared his throat and looked back up. “No, I definitely remember some bad things.”

“Oh, Caduceus, I’m sorry-” 

“It’s okay, I don’t think about them much. There are a lot of happy things to think about too, aren’t there?”

Caduceus looked her over then, catching her incomprehension with an easy understanding that made her shrink back a little, and exhaled with one of those soft smiles he seemed to be in endless supply of. Jester wished she didn’t know the limits of her own stockpile, discovered this very evening. “Hey, you’ve had a pretty big night already. It’s okay for you to take a little time to focus on yourself and process. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Ah. No. Wasn’t she supposed to be doing the cheering up here?

She took a deep breath to steady herself before she could do something embarrassing like starting to cry again. And then another one, because it actually seemed to help her remember why she was here in the first place. “I do, though! Everyone was so nice to me tonight, and then when I was thinking about it I realized that I couldn’t remember anyone doing that for you, and I know you’re really good at this kind of stuff but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have anyone to talk to, you know? We love you so much!”

At that, Caduceus looked - he looked really happy, actually, his smile curling warmly on one side and his ears perking up. “Well, I have all of you to talk to. That’s a lot better than what I had before you came along.”

“Really?” Jester urged, something loosed and flapping lightly in her chest. “You can talk to _any_ of us?”

“Feels pretty great, doesn’t it?” Caduceus was outright grinning now, and she could feel an answering smile unfurl on her own face, no stockpile needed. 

“Bet I can make it feel better,” Jester challenged, and scrambled forward to hug him. She had to kneel in his lap to get a proper angle on his tall frame, but she managed to wrap her arms around his chest and press her cheek to him and squeeze like she could hold all that happiness and connection in place all by herself.

“Oh,” Caduceus said, pleased - and wasn’t this easier than talking anyway, she wasn’t sure why she had even bothered - and went to hug her back. Caduceus gave the best hugs, warm and fuzzy and second only to her Mama’s, made even better by the way that he absently nuzzled at the side of her head with an amused huff of breath. 

Jester bounced a little on her knees and nuzzled him back. Caduceus’ arms shifted, hugging her tighter, and she did it again. Nudging up aside his face, she felt him twitch and stutter out an exhale like it had come from her own body. “Okay?” she murmured.

“That tickles,” Caduceus murmured back, muffled in her shoulder, and Jester raced through happiness all the way to mischief before she could even think about stopping, an instinct that had been with her even before the Traveler.

She pulled back, vibrating with excitement. “Ca- _du_ -ceus-”

“-oh, no-”

“Are you _tick_ -i-lish?”

She was hoping to make him blush and squirm the way that most of her friends did when she teased them, but true to form Caduceus was nearly impossible to fluster. He just blinked at her. “Didn’t I say that?”

Just for that, she pinned his arms to his sides in another hug and nosed around his ear and the side of his neck until he was outright giggling, high and breathy and so unlike his voice that she had to pat around his head just to make sure that it was really him. 

“St-stahap-pff-” Caduceus interrupted himself with a snort that made Jester giggle along with him, which must have tickled even more if Caduceus’ increased struggle was any indication. 

“Aw, that’s so cute! Tickle tickle tickle!”

Caduceus snorted again and shoved lightly at her belly. Wary that Caduceus might gather his composure and tickle her back, Jester sacrificed their hug to grab the offending hand. 

“ _No,_ ” Caduceus squeaked, using his newfound reach to shuffle her right out of his lap.

Jester clutched his hand even tighter to keep from hitting the deck. “Wow, Caduceus, you don’t have to _push_.”

Caduceus did look embarrassed now, cheeks flushing a beautiful pink to match his hair. He reached out to help her keep her balance, wiggling his wrist a little until Jester let go. “I thought you were going to tickle my hands.”

“Your hands are ticklish? I didn’t know you could even tickle hands.” Jester frowned. “Caduceus, do you not like being tickled?”

Caduceus pressed his newly freed hands to his face, the pale skin only making his blush more apparent. “No, just… it was a lot.”

“Oh! It’s okay, Caduceus, I won’t tickle you if you don’t like it.” She meant it too - she had totally stopped trying to tickle Caleb when he told her that his instinct might just be to light her on fire next time even though she was _pretty_ sure it was a joke. 

Caduceus said something from behind his hands that Jester couldn’t quite catch. She reached forward and tapped him lightly on the knee. “Do you want another hug?”

Caduceus rubbed briskly at his face, and when he lowered his hands again he looked nearly as calm as usual, no trace of the frantic giggling he’d just been doing. Jester tried not to pout. “Sure,” he still said, and even when she drew back to give him the option of space he reached for her shoulder and drew her back in. She climbed back into his lap, trying to be as big as possible and wrap him up like her Mama would without sticking her nose anywhere ticklish. 

They ended up with her forehead pressed to his collarbone, his hair falling in a gentle waterfall against one side of her face. “Yep,” he said warmly, “you did it, this is better.”

Jester beamed and winched her arms around him even tighter. “This is really nice, Caduceus.”

“Mhmm.” They sat for a long, calming minute, Caduceus’ chin perched between her horns, and then she felt his arms loosen a little. She prepared to pull back, wishing it could last a little longer, but then something dropped into her lap.

It took a little maneuvering, but she glanced down to see Caduceus’ hand, palm up.

She kept hugging Caduceus, unwilling to break the circle of warmth that wrapped them both, but she _did_ have a whole extra limb to play with. She brought her tail around and, biting her lip in concentration, dragged the spaded tip lightly over Caduceus’ palm. 

His fingers twitched, and Jester couldn’t help laughing as puffs of Caduceus’ squeaky laughter began to resurface. “Aw, you do like being tickled!” She could have teased him _so_ much more - she felt like it might make him even _more_ embarrassed and tickly, and it was nice to think of being able to break him once in a while.

But for now, she felt her friend shaking with laughter, so much of it that he had to snort and squeak every so often just to get it all out, and figured that she’d done enough cheering up for one day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you're so inclined, come say hi on [tumblr](https://chockfullofsecrets.tumblr.com)!


End file.
